Question

Answer any four of the following in 30 − 40 words each:

(a) "It is his karam, his destiny." What is Mukesh's family's attitude towards their situation?
(b) What were the terms of the indigo contract between the British landlords and the Indian peasants?
(c) How will 'keeping quiet' protect our environment?
(d) Which objects of nature does Keats mention as sources of joy in his poem, 'A Thing of Beauty'?
(e) Why did the Tiger King decide to get married?
(f) What was Sadao's father's dream for him? How did Sadao realise it?

Answer 1

a) Mukesh’s family had resigned themselves to their fate. His father was a poor bangle maker and could not send his sons to school. He could only teach them how to make bangles. His family accepted it as their fate and felt that the God-given lineage could not be broken.

b) Most of the arable land in the Champaran district was divided into large estates that were owned by Englishmen and Indian tenants worked for them. They got the agreements from the sharecroppers to pay them compensation for being released from the 15% arrangement.  

c) By ‘Keeping Quiet’ the poet means that we should stop all our destructive activities that harm nature. If we count up to 12, and do not talk, the environment will be saved from us.

d) The poet says that a beautiful thing is a source of everlasting happiness. The few things that add joy to our life are the Sun, the Moon, a bower of trees and a clear stream of water.

e) The Tiger King was able to kill only seventy tigers in his kingdom. To prove the prophecy wrong he needed to kill thirty more tigers. He decided to marry a girl from a royal family of a state with a large tiger population so that he could kill thirty more tigers.

f) Sadao’s father dreamt of a bright future for his son. He wanted him to reach the sky as the limit and take Japan towards a better future too. Sadao understood that education was the most important thing to his father and at the age of twenty two, he went to America to study surgery and medicine. At the age of thirty, he retuned having realised his father’s dream.